I’ve written a couple of times about a rally to be held tomorrow in Grant Park that would be hilarious were it not an indication of the threat to public health that the anti-vaccine movement represents. Actually, it is to some extent hilarious, mainly due to the anti-vaccine Poe-worthy “music” that will be the featured entertainment.

I’ll just repeat again. Although the issue of how much power the state should have to compel vaccination is a legitimate political and social question, as I’ve pointed out before for Jenny McCarthy’s “Green Our Vaccines” rally and this rally, it’s really far more about being anti-vaccine than pro-freedom. The “health freedom” movement, of which the “no forced vaccination” movement is but a subset, is in reality far more about freedom for quacks to ply their quackery without any pesky interference from the government and for alt-med believers to use whatever quack nostroms or down whatever supplements they like, safety be damned.

Sadly, this week is likely to continue to be a very busy week on the anti-vaccine front.

Offit made a distinction between compulsory and mandatory vaccinations in his “Vaccine War” interview. Mandatory just means that if you choose not to vaccinate, you pay a societal cost (like not being able to attend a certain school). So vaccines are in some sense “mandatory”, but not compulsory (which the anti-vaxxers assert). May be nitpicking, but I find it to be a useful distinction.

Thanks, it was something preying on the back of my mind. “They” keep using compulsory and mandatory indistinctly to complain how “we” want to stick them with needles against their will, but I know there was a difference.
This is exactly as you say. And this is not nitpicking, it’s using the right word at the right place.

They were in Baltimore not too long ago, and I was going to go with my “All I got was not the flu” tee shirt, but the ethics committee caught on to my writing “shenanigans”. I’ve been walking on eggshells for over a month. Anyone that knows me knows I don’t like to walk on eggshells.

I wonder if I can make it to Chicago if I drive all night? (I wouldn’t even go to New Jersey on a bet.)

DISCLAIMER: I neither condone nor advocate for the destruction of Dodo Bird eggs to prove my point of walking on egg shells.

fwiw: The “seattle” one isn’t actually all that close to seattle. This is nothing on the scale of the Chicago one, thank goodness. It’s just at a local library of a smallish town. Still, wouldn’t surprise me if this picks up in Seattle.

Applying their name “Americans for Personal Rights” to the anti-vax cause reminds me of how the Scientologists have their “Citizen’s Commission for Human Rights” as another front group against psychiatry.

I’d love to see the rally be crashed by supporters of other personal rights, like the right for gays to marry, the right to have legal abortions without restrictions, etc. Dilute their message while promoting something that’s good, amirite?

Fine, have your antivax personal rights, just don’t enforce your nutty views on the rest of us, or on your children, who do not have the ability to make up their own mind.
But if one person becomes ill due to your malfeasance, you face civil and criminal liability. Because with personal rights comes personal responsibility. You want to endanger the public, you pay the price when it happens.

I’m pretty sure I’m going, but I’ve promised my husband not to get myself in trouble, so I’m going to have to watch and stay quiet. He’s afraid I’ll get my head bashed in. Which I might if I follow my instincts.

Here’s some ideas for how any serious “vaccine objectors” can practice their choices without making themselves a danger to public safety:
1. Spread yourselves out as thinly as possible.
2. Don’t move into major urban areas.
3. DO NOT recruit.
4. Don’t publicize scientific claims about vaccine safety.

If they abide by these rules, they can at least achieve the status of non-Muslims under Sharia law: detested and marginalized, but tolerated.

i am confused. if you actually believe vaccination confers immunity and are vaccinated, what possible difference would it make to you if the person standing next to you had been vaccinated or not? you would be immune, and they would be sick. seems the reverse is demonstrated by the comments here, which are incredibly sick.

As already mention above, vaccines are not 100% effective, so there is a small chance that even though a person is fully vaccinated, they may not be immune. And, as Poogles mentioned, herd immunity is important to protect those who cannot be vaccinated (too young, too old, transplant recipients on immunosuppressants, cancer patients whose immune systems have been wiped out by chemo, AIDS patients, etc.).

Give a read to antiantivax.flurf.net for a primer on some of the anti-vaccine arguments and why they are wrong.

See Jacobson v Commonwealth Supreme Court of The United States. The case addressed this very question.

The SCOTUS rejected a complaint against Massachusetts’s compulsory vaccination law that it said infringed the “inherent right of every freeman to care for his own body and health in such way as seems to him best.’’

Whatever Jacobson’s right to care for himself, he had none to impose risks on his fellow citizens.

What concerns me the most is the amount of research that is completed on these vaccines. I’ve worked for two corporations that made vaccines. What was considered success concerned me. A vaccine was considered successful if 30% percent of a group would show an antigen reaction when challenged with the virus or bacteria. Now that didn’t mean they could fight of the virus or bacteria, just that their would be an immune response. In viewing this, people are seeing why even though they got the vaccine, they are still getting sick. When I gave vaccines in the military, the personnel would ask me ” Why am I getting this shot? I’m going to get sick anyway.” I would have to keep my mouth shut. I’m really not fond of the what they use to kill the virus or vaccine and then inject into us. Their effectiveness is just not proven on large studies.